


The Erlenmeyer Flask

by leiascully



Series: The FBI's Most Unwanted [26]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Episode Related, Gen, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-18
Updated: 2015-07-18
Packaged: 2018-04-10 00:04:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4369514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In her hands she held the evidence of a universe beyond what she had imagined.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Erlenmeyer Flask

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: 1.23 "The Erlenmeyer Flask"  
> Disclaimer: _The X-Files_ and all related characters are the property of Chris Carter, 1013 Productions, and Fox Studios. No profit is made from this work and no infringement is intended.

Mulder and Scully, Scully and Mulder: business in their suits, the bearers of strange tidings. A united front with blank faces. Even their names began to taste the same in her mouth - the short u, the lick of the l, and the r on the end of his name to grumble when he strayed too far from the light of reason. Scully, with her lantern, canvassing the corridors of the Hoover building for an honest man, and what she found was the truth seeker. And then together they found something more. 

In a moment, she knew the elation that Mulder had felt when they had lost nine minutes of their lives in a flash of light. The bacteria were extraterrestrial. They had come from a place beyond the thin permeable horizon of the atmosphere. There was nothing like them on earth. Mulder had been right to look to the stars. They had proof. 

He had handed it to her, the flask marked Purity Control. She had made a joke, not knowing that she held a revelation. In Berube's lab, they had found the answer to the essential question. Mulder, sardonic, had taunted her with it the first day: "Do you believe in the existence of extraterrestrials?" She had not then. Now in her hands she held the evidence of a universe beyond what she had imagined. She could redeem their efforts and make sense of the years they had spent in exile in the basement, disregarded by their peers. She and Mulder had done good work; they deserved better than obscurity and scorn. They might buy their freedom with this, an office with a window and a cordial nod in the bullpen and a longer leash to investigate their particular mysteries.

And then her proof was gone, and a woman was dead, and Mulder was missing, and what mattered the most was that she get him back at any price. That was something she had not imagined either; it had been beyond plausibility to think that she might care for anyone more than she cared for justice, but there was no justice if Mulder was taken by the truths he sought. There was nothing if Mulder died. 

She ransomed him at the cost of the last incontrovertible evidence she had, and she was not sorry. Deep Throat died in her arms and she was sorry, but regret was overwhelmed by relief that Mulder was alive, that his pulse was strong under her fingertips. She called 911 and then gently shifted Deep Throat to the asphalt. She could do nothing for him but say a quick prayer and hope he had made his peace with whatever power he might worship. Mulder coughed and groaned and she knelt on the bridge and pulled him into her lap, brushing his hair away from his face to estimate the damage They had done to him. She would add it to the tally she was keeping of what They owed to her and hers. 

"Scully," he rasped.

"Shhh, Mulder," she said, examining the tender skin around his eyes. In the dim yellow glow of the street lights, his face looked raw. "It's all right. It's all right."

Even through his haze, she knew that he knew she was lying, but he quieted under her touch. _Trust no one_ , she thought, but that would leave him so utterly, utterly alone. 

She had not wanted to know that the conspiracy was real. She had been happier hunting monsters with Mulder and imagining that the government's interventions were benign. In Idaho, in Wisconsin, she had still been able to believe that the official explanations had been well-intentioned, that secrecy was safety, and that protection was in the people's best interest. As a Navy brat, she had been brought up on the doctrine that there would be times she would not understand, but that the military's authority should not be questioned. She had no choice but to question it now.

They had taken her evidence and Mulder's contact. They had taken the X-Files. They had taken the office, that strange cramped space crowded with the half-substantiated accounts of the unexplained. They had taken her partner, her very first partner, and put her back in the morgue. It took such a small box to transport her personal effects from the Hoover building to Quantico. Everything of worth, she carried inside her. 

She had nothing left but faith: in Mulder and his tenacity, in the way that the universe could be explained in time, in the revelations she had witnessed. But faith would be enough. It always was.


End file.
